Dual boot is the low-risk way to move to Zorin OS 18: Windows stays on the PC, Zorin sits beside it, and a menu at startup lets you choose. This page covers the Zorin-specific decisions and the safety steps that protect your Windows installation.
Our channel has a full dual-boot guide for Ubuntu, and the discipline there applies word for word: back up first, shrink the Windows partition from inside Windows, and never let an installer guess with your only copy of your data. This page adds what is specific to Zorin OS 18 — its installer wording, its Windows habits, and the two Windows settings that cause almost every dual-boot problem.
👆 The installer choice that decides everything. Example wording — for dual boot, always the alongside option.
Every dual-boot failure I see starts here, not in the Linux installer. Do these inside Windows first:
Boot from your Zorin USB and choose the Try Zorin OS option first. Spend ten minutes in the live session: connect Wi-Fi, open the browser, play a video, check sound. Whatever does not work live will not magically work after installing — this is your free hardware test, and it is the same test Zorin itself recommends before anyone buys Pro.
Start the installer from the live desktop and choose Install Zorin OS alongside Windows. The installer uses the free space you created and shows a simple slider for how the shared disk is divided. Check the numbers once more before confirming — the alongside route does not touch your Windows partition, but the erase route on the previous screen would have removed everything, so read the summary screen as if it were a bank form.
After installing, your PC shows the GRUB menu at startup — Zorin OS at the top, Windows Boot Manager below it. Pick Windows a few times in the first week and confirm it still opens normally. Two Zorin-side habits help: set your correct time zone during setup (a wrong clock offset between the two systems is a classic dual-boot annoyance), and let Zorin install its updates fully before judging speed.
Honesty matters more than enthusiasm. If your disk is very small — under about 120 GB total — two systems will strangle each other; run Zorin from the live USB for a while instead, or dedicate an old second PC. If one specific Windows program is your entire job, dual boot still works, but expect to live in Windows most days — and if your employer manages the PC, their rules come before any of this.
Zorin OS 18 Pro shown live — the layouts, the apps and the full tour on a real PC.
▶️ Watch Full VideoYes. From Windows you can delete the Zorin partitions in Disk Management and extend the Windows partition into the freed space, then repair the Windows boot entry so the GRUB menu disappears. It is a ten-minute job when done in the right order — and another reason the backup from step 1 stays valuable until the dual boot is settled.
Boot Zorin, open a terminal and run sudo update-grub — it rescans the disk and normally finds Windows again. If Windows itself replaced the boot order after a big update, enter your BIOS boot menu once, choose Zorin, and the GRUB menu returns as the first screen.
The official minimum for Core is 15 GB of disk, but that is a floor, not a recommendation. Give Core at least 40 GB so updates and apps have room, and more for Pro, whose official requirement is higher because of the bundled creative and productivity apps. On a 256 GB or larger drive, dual boot is comfortable.